Olga Korbut

Olga Korbut is a Belarusian-Soviet former Olympic gymnast whose 1972 Munich Summer Olympics performance — at age 17, where she won three gold medals and one silver medal in artistic gymnastics — launched the 1970s international Olympic-gymnastics commercial breakthrough and shaped subsequent late-20th-century international Olympic-gymnastics technique-and-judging-standards practice. She was born Olga Valentinovna Korbut on May 16, 1955, in Grodno, Byelorussian SSR, Soviet Union (modern Belarus). Her father Valentin Korbut was a factory engineer and her mother Valentina Korbut was a homemaker.

Her early-career Soviet-gymnastics training at the Grodno Gymnastics School under coach Renald Knysh — beginning at age eight in 1963 — launched her late-1960s and early-1970s Soviet Union-gymnastics public profile. Her 1969 first place Soviet-junior-championship gymnastics achievement at age 14 and her subsequent 1970 Soviet-Union senior-team selection launched her 1972 Munich Summer Olympics performance.

Her 1972 Munich Summer Olympics performance — across August 26 to September 11, 1972 — launched her 20th-century international Olympic-gymnastics public profile. The 1972 Munich Summer Olympics performance produced her three gold medals (team competition, balance beam, and floor exercise) and her one silver medal (uneven bars), her "Korbut Flip" backflip-on-uneven-bars (a back-handspring-on-the-bar move that has been continuously cited as one of the foundational late-20th-century Olympic-gymnastics innovations), and her tearful-balance-beam-fall-and-redemption recovery sequence.

Her 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics performance produced her additional gold-and-silver medal sequence (one gold medal in team competition; one silver medal in balance beam) and produced her 1977 retirement from competitive Olympic gymnastics at age 22. Her 1986 Chernobyl-disaster-relief humanitarian work — across her 1986–1991 founding of the Olga Korbut Foundation supporting Chernobyl-affected children — and her subsequent 1991 emigration to the United States produced her later international humanitarian public profile. The 1988 induction into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame recognized her foundational influence on late-20th-century international Olympic-gymnastics practice.

Her name Olga derives from the Old Norse Helga meaning "holy" or "blessed." Olga has been a popular American girls' name across the early-to-mid-20th century.